Page Updated: January 10, 2024

Acadia National Park

2022 AUGUST

Little Moose Island -Acadia National Park

Acadia National Park has a special place in our hearts. Our first trip to the northeast was early October of 2019, and we made a quick trip to the park. One day I’ll write about it, but for now I’ll just say the trees that visit were ablaze in autumn colors that make New England famous. And the park had yet to be crushed by the Covid effect.

We fell in love with the northeast that year and knew we’d be back.

Returning in 2022 painted a different picture. Late summer, so no stunning autumn hikes to trek; and the park was overflowing with tourists at many turnouts. So much so that we passed several of them up. But even though the park was bursting and it rained the majority of our stay, we made it to some new areas of the park and got to experience camping in Acadia.

Our 2022 trip didn’t make us love it any less!

We booked our camp a couple months in advance, but homebase this leg was in Bangor allowing us to make multiple trips to the park.

Since we weren’t aware this part of the park existed on our previous visit, we took time one day to venture into Acadia’s Schoodic District. It’s popular with cyclist, but we found it far less populated than Mount Desert Island. The point is relative as Schoodic Point was so overcrowded all we could manage was a drive by through the parking lot.

Schoodic District

There are a handful hike trails on Schoodic Peninsula and a new-ish campground. Schoodic Woods Campground opened in 2015 and is currently the only Acadia campground that has electricity at most sites.

Cadillac Mountain

We skipped out on Cadillac Mountain in 2019 because apparently we’re idiots. I’m sure we thought we’d just see it on our next go ‘round. Well, the “next go ‘round” was here, and we almost missed it. Gone are the days when you could willy-nilly travel into a park and see its greatest features on a whim. The reservation system implemented across the nation has obliterated spur-of-the-moment sightseeing.

We couldn’t get reservations on day we had booked to camp, but we were able to get a slot on another day. Luckily, we were close enough to Acadia to accommodate.

Blackwoods Campground

Our reserved tent site was at Blackwoods Campground on Mount Desert Island East. Blackwoods is situated closer to creature comforts as well as popular destinations within the park making it the most book campground in Acadia.

Camp sites in Blackwoods are wooded with a few skinny row of trees between them; so nothing super private. But more trees than we’ve seen in other national park campgrounds. NPS just works with the available terrain.

Thunder Hole

Since it rained most of the time, we spent a lot of time in Bar Harbor - will write it up later. Wariness of slick rock face made us pivot from a planned Precipice Trail Beehive combo, one of the most difficult hikes in Acadia due to extreme cliffs and narrow ledges, to an easy hike from the campground to Thunder Hole.

When we arrived at Thunder Hole, we found ourselves alone. Not another tourist in site. Why? Not only was it raining, but it was low tide - so it was missing the one thing that makes Thunder Hole iconic. Water!

We would laugh if we weren’t so used to things going bizarrely for us on the regular.

Even so, Thunder Hole sans tourists - and water - was a pleasant surprise; a beautifully secluded and moody morning on the coast of Maine.